Pros
Schedule flexibility. While this is a pro in some cases, this makes communication suboptimal as colleagues are rarely available when needed. While it tends to be difficult to communicate with colleagues, they are routinely unresponsive on critical correspondence. In order to succeed, a motivated employee must make several calls and transmit several e-mails over several days or weeks before prompting a response. In summation, nobody cares about anybody else at Social Vocational Services. While employment specialists are charged with developing jobs for intellectually-disabled adults, the rest of the company hates the extra workload of paperwork associated with it. So each time the employment specialist succeeds, he/she receives blowback from fellow colleagues who complain about the added work, or oftentimes from management who are oddly eager to see the employment specialist fail. Finally, do not expect to be treated professionally or respectfully as an employment specialist. Everyone at Social Vocational Services despises the employment specialist, and they make this point abundantly clear in meetings where they chastise and ridicule the employment specialist for manufactured reasons to deflect attention from themselves. These are some of the reasons why employment specialists rarely last longer than 1 year with the company.
Cons
Absolutely no training of staff. Management doesn't care. Wages are never adjusted for cost of living. Constant gossip and unprofessional conduct from colleagues. No direct-deposit option. Physical paychecks only. High employee turnover, meaning most personnel are uninformed. Bad attitudes from personnel lead to poor communication and dysfunctional work environment. Staff are not trained to supervise their intellectually-disabled clientele, much less to offer community inclusion services. Management and fellow staff reject fresh ideas and innovative proposals for improved business practices. Management penalizes outside-the-box thinking. Social Vocational Services lacks leadership. While they have managers strictly by title, they do not know how to lead, but instead prefer to gossip, intimidate and belittle. Finally, there are absolutely no career prospects with Social Vocational Services; it's a dead-end job.
